Winter weather: Godzilla El Niño favored to kick NW Blob’s ass

Scene: Godzilla El Niño walks into a bar and there sits smokin’ hot California with an empty glass. Always generous, Godzilla approaches the bar and orders a double for California … a bit more than Cal wants in one sitting, but what the hell. The bartender puts on a sheepish look and glances down the dark bar at the pub’s newest bully — the NW Blob (with Washington cowering behind it).

Godzilla in a scene from the film “Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster,” 1971. (Photo by Toho/Getty Images)

Godzilla and The Blob lock eyes and prepare to fight it out for control over the bar … (hey, it’s a Western!)

Anyway, like all Hollywood movies, who will win is apparently a forgone collusion since Godzilla is almost always helping out humankind. And, that’s pretty much how climatologists are seeing the current matchup playing out in the Pacific right now.

An “El Niño,” when the central and eastern area of the tropical Pacific are warmer than usual, is growing so strong that it’s been predicted to be the strongest in a generation:

“This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño,” Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told the LA Times. “If this lives up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods, mudslides and mayhem.”

“Places that are normally dry get extremely wet, and of course that would include the American West,” Patzert told CBC News. “So we’re kayaking down the street in Los Angeles, and they’re playing golf in February in Minneapolis.”

In fact, he says, it could be bigger than the El Niño of 1997 … which brought floods, mudslides and hurricanes to California (and slightly warmer and drier winter to Washington). NOAA predicts there “is a greater than 90 percent chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16, and around an 85 percent chance it will last into early spring 2016.”

The only thing standing in its way is The NW Blob, a big pool of warm water off Washington’s coast that has been wreaking havoc in the Northwest: Hotter then normal this … drier than normal that … and, as a kicker, wildfires and a troubled Puget Sound (see video at bottom of story).

If The Blob and the high pressure system that sustains it remain over the winter, it could push all that moisture (possibly more than even California wants in one winter, but better than a continued drought) north, leaving California and the Northwest with empty glasses.

Cliff Mass, regional weather guru and University of Washington scientist, is betting on Godzilla and so are others.

“Just like in the movies, Godzilla will become our ally. And it makes sense that the mighty Godzilla will prevail,” he wrote in a blog post Tuesday morning (Sept. 2).

He explains:

The BLOB, as documented in a nice paper by State Climatologist Nick Bond and colleagues was the stepchild of a huge area of high pressure along and east of the West Coast of the U.S. High pressure resulted in less wind and mixing of the upper ocean layers, leading to reducing mixing of cooler sub-surface water to the surface. Thus, the ocean surface was warmer than normal. …

Here is the typical sea level pressure anomaly associated with El Niño (the difference of pressure from normal). Pressures are LOWER THAN NORMAL over the eastern Pacific (purple colors). A BLOB KILLER. Why? Because it is exactly opposite of the pattern that produced the BLOB— high pressure in the same area.

… in the hypothetical case where the persistent region of warm water in the North Pacific associated with “The Blob” stuck around through the winter, it’s plausible that this could modulate the atmospheric effects of the powerful El Niño event in the tropics. But that hypothetical situation is rather unlikely to actually occur this winter. That’s primarily because “The Blob” itself is thought to largely be a side-effect of the multi-year persistence of the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, which suppressed the North Pacific storm track and prevented the vertical mixing of colder subsurface ocean waters toward the surface.

It’s certainly possible that there has been some degree of self-reinforcement in this situation—where the Triple R triggered The Blob in the first place, but the Triple R was later sustained by it, and so on … (but) that warmth is rapidly disappearing as El Niño strengthens rapidly. The take-home message here: a primary cause of the Triple R is no longer in place, and so it’s unlikely that we’ll see yet another winter of persistent anomalous ridging over the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

So, there you have it. Godzilla will win by a knockout.

Updated with video

But but but … What about poor, cowering Washington, who is suffering so much at the villainous hands of The Blob? Mass says …

A strong El Niño brings modestly warmer than normal temperatures, with a snowpack about 20 percent below normal. Much better than last winter. (!)

In other words, a strong El Niño is normally not great for us, but since The Blob has been such a bastard we’re going to be better off under the rule of Godzilla.

Video by Jake Ellison

Hot Puget Sound: A new view of climate change

Washington state scientists came together in Seattle on July 30 to tell the tale of a hot Puget Sound. What we learned was that temperatures in Puget Sound are the warmest recorded in the past 25 years and the conditions are increasing harmful algae blooms, increasing shellfish closures, lowering dissolved oxygen, and creating unfavorable conditions for salmon and other cold-loving marine species. Is this the stagnant future of climate change?

A powerful El Niño event in the tropical Pacific is virtually certain, and the present event has a good shot at becoming the strongest on record.

A wetter and warmer than average winter is likely for most or all of California in 2015-2016, and there may be an increased risk of flooding in many regions.

Partial and potentially substantial alleviation of drought severity in California is likely, though even the wettest winter on record would be insufficient to erase California’s multi-year water deficits.

Even though heavy snow may fall at the highest elevations, it’s not clear that conditions will be consistently cold enough for substantial snowpack accumulation at middle elevations in California.

Record-warm North Pacific brings increased risk that East/Central Pacific hurricane remnants will affect California between now and the end of October.

Managing hydrological impacts of simultaneously-occurring record El Niño and record drought in California will be challenging.